Currently we have these cooldowns, so as to make us do different things and not the same mission all the time. This cryptic strategy has failed because there are still many dead queues. These need to be busy and not dead. so this needs change. Bigger better valueable rewards in all queues needed to liven up this game.
Why the fixation with PvE queus? Didn't the OP just made another poll a few days ago:
No need to beat a dead horse. This is the model employed since F2P came onboard and same issue happens with low turn out year after year. Late summer and early fall have been common decline in overall player participation since F2P went live and that creates "EMPTY queus". It's a normal cycle but Cryptic has tried to fix this by having seasons/expansions come up at those critical times.
DR launched last October and so will Season 11 this year. Give it sometime and things should come back up. However, if you stick around you will see ups/downs on player participation. This is bad for solo players but get a fleet or armada that can help you run those PVEs at your own pace instead of asking for huge systematic changes in the design of the game.
Creating same polls over and over again with same topic does not help this cause.
I honestly think that the best way the devs can go about getting people playing these older queues is less to do with the standard rewards. Instead, we should look at more unique rewards.
My suggestion would be for the devs to occasionally spotlight these old queues, like they do with Crystalline Catastrophe and the Mirror Universe queues. When spotlighted, the queues would provide you with unique Doffs (or even Boffs), Space and Ground equipment, new ability manuals, and the mark reward should be completely flexible, just like during the other two spotlights.
This will encourage people to play these queues more often, both during the spotlight when the rewards are there, and out of "season" as practice. Though honestly, a couple of the queues may need a rework to ensure that players don't end up in what is essentially a fail state.
You never know... It might work.
Unique rewards is one way to get people to play, but do these slow STF need to be queued content?
Make slow STF stand alone missions with rewards like doff packs.
PVE missions like Storming the Spire, The Breach and viscous cycle would be well suited for that treatment.
For PVE with 3 difficulties (normal, advanced and elite) remove the normal difficulty or make the normal difficulty variant into standalone missions or patrol missions to thin out the queue.
The time that normal difficulty was useful for learning or even worth the time is long past us so if advanced and elite variants are available then they (normal variant) should either be removed completely or be put to use as stand-alone or patrol missions.
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
The queues aren't dead because of seasonal fluctuations. Queues are dead because they are structurally flawed, and remain dead at all phases in the seasonal cycle. It wasn't always this way, and I can track exactly the sequence of events that ultimately led to this condition, as above.
You are wrong. It was always like this even before the queues were in place. For instance, pre- F2P hardly anyone would do "Breaking the planet", "Terradome, Ground SB24 or the old DS9 under Siege". Some of those have gone away but does it sound familiar?.
The problem with grouping players together was there even before the inception of the current queue system. Back then, if you were heavily equipped and DPS savvy you could take the event on your own. Post F2P queus system killed that since now you have to have a "group" of players to enter the event.
Anyway, point being made there were "empty queus" there and so it is now rewind that 7 or so seasons past with same problem. Nothing new in this.
Now let's look back at Season 6: Back then, we had 6 STF queues, ALL of which were alive, as opposed to today, where there might be 4 or so which can be expected to pop regularly at all. Why? Because back then, each queue had a point: There was something you GOT from that queue, something you got nowhere else. When marks came around, while no queues were actually added, the number of live queues shrank. Restoring unique value to the queues is what will bring them back. Otherwise, they will simply remain dead.
And I actually promote to go back to this model. Yes, drops are random and "not fair" and yes you might not get your piece of equipment after twenty runs. So play on. That's the reason we play this game for - all that window-shopping and instant-gratification stuff leaves a lot of the game lacking, like having 80% of the queues superflous and that chunk of content could basically be cut from the game without loss.
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
I think the PVE queues are a outdated game mode , the future in mmo's is Battle/adventure Zones . i for one dont like waiting for a queue to pop or fail , even in private queues there are issues especially with the bigger queues . IN a battle /adventure zone you and your group just go into a zoned instance and boom no fuss or muss . you play the zone get your marks , there just needs to be missions that enable you to earn the special tokens used in the rep system . done and done , no more ques , just run the zones and just have them scale on how many players in a instance .
its a simple design that alot of MMO's use . thats the direction STO should be taking .
Of course one aspect will always be the "quality of life" effect. If I take the outrageous assumption that I actually want to play some STO and decided that I want to play a queue today regardless of any possible rewards, just to play a queue. So which one is it going to be? The one where I wait a minute or two or the one with one guy waiting for it which I've never seen.
Once players make up their mind what they like most (and they will always do that, regardless of how well balanced rewards are), other people will also play these queues, just because they are being played, so it's possible to just play and enjoy the game instead of waiting.
My mother was an epohh and my father smelled of tulaberries
I really wish people would just leave well enough alone. Removing/reducing the cooldown will change nothing. Those that run those queues will just be able to run them faster and continue to ignore the others. So it solves absolutely nothing.
As for increasing the rewards. Be careful what you ask for. The only way they could even have a chance at getting more activity in the queues would be to increase the rewards while nerfing rewards in the areas that people are currently spending most of their time doing. The outrage would be tremendous and overall it would serve to make it even harder to grind out the marks etc.
So just leave this stuff alone. The reason the queues have little activity is because it's far easier to do other things to get what you need and I for one am mostly satisfied with the way things are.
Solutions:
1) Hike up the rewards of the unpopular queues enough to incentivate playing them.
2) Remove the CD on all ground queues and lower the cooldown on the unpopular space queues to 15 minutes.
Remove the cooldowns on the Red Alerts and Patrol Missions. Cut the cooldowns on the PVE Queues to 20 minutes. Tweak the Rewards up in the non-played Queues. Reduce 20 person Queues to 5.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
I don't understand why they have the cool downs anyway. It doesn't push players into other queues. If a player wants to run fleet alert 50 times in a row why stop em?
I'm a little surprised nobody picked up on the suggestions in red i made earlier.
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
I don't understand why they have the cool downs anyway. It doesn't push players into other queues. If a player wants to run fleet alert 50 times in a row why stop em?
Like with many other mechanics in this game, its just time gating to keep you logged in longer. Simple as that.
I'm a little surprised nobody picked up on the suggestions in red i made earlier.
I can only speculate:
(1) many people do not read many posts but put their opinion under the thread anyways, even if it was mentioned a dozen times (and sometimes even refuted).
(2) the red, at least for me, is difficult to read. The green further up is similar but has better contrast.
(3) a whole post where everything is emphasized at least to me screams "you only need to skim me, I'm only here for the attention" (no offence meant, but that's how I react to all color, all caps, every other word using some kind of emphasis like bold, underline, different font size and similar). And yes, that makes me kind of a hypocrite considering point (1) I just made.
That being said, removing normal queues is not an option IMO. Players who know their drill through everything are the exception, games like this do have a high turnover rate and there should be some learning ground for new arrivals, which the game needs to stay afloat. Of course it doesn't work properly as it is, but a dry run of the stuff should be accessible so I don't have to worry too much about stuff happening while I read the in game instructions and get my bearings of the map.
My mother was an epohh and my father smelled of tulaberries
Removing cooldowns will just means more players stay playing ISA and CCA endlessly and won't ever move elsewhere.
The queues these days are dead because the reward/effort ration is totally screwed and so a large number of people won't play the inefficient queues.
Just look at those that payout a pittance in dilithium or marks, colony invasion, SB24, Breach, Breaking the Planet - they are all dead because you can get more marks, dilithium or loot elsewhere for less effort or the same.
And those queues needing 20 players? They are dead unless you go private with a lot of friends or are in a channel like the new 20player one and can get like minded people together.
Cooldowns have nothing to do with it. All it is is simple time:reward ratios being unbalanced and people going for the most efficient way to farm resources (be they marks, dilithium, XP etc)
About making some PvE Queues solo missions, we already have precedent for that. Within the Romulan Vengeance Arc you will find solo Missions for Atmospheric Assault (The Best Defense) and Defend Rh'lhho Station (Abducted). Very doable because they have already done it.
And if you look at the last Shuttle Event, the most popular Mission that was being run - Atmospheric Assault. Not Rocket Science folks - it gave the best rewards. Do that on a consistent basis all around and you will see people playing them again.
Post edited by ltminns on
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
Currently we have these cooldowns, so as to make us do different things and not the same mission all the time. This cryptic strategy has failed because there are still many dead queues. These need to be busy and not dead. so this needs change. Bigger better valueable rewards in all queues needed to liven up this game.
The cooldowns aren't that big of an issue anyway... if you have more than one character and a few queues you like. Run the queues you like, if you hit a point where all of them are on cooldown swap characters, work from there. Admittedly, I tend to prefer playing multiple characters/factions/professions/etc., but that does serve as a complete workaround for the issue.
Really, though, it's not a huge surprise that the queues are quieter these days. We have top Mk gear unavailable on the drop or Shop tables, higher NPC hitpoints, lower rewards for Advanced queues (720 dilithium) than the old Elites (960 dilithium) they replaced, longer progression systems with higher progression requirements, and so on. Those things will naturally push players into more efficient queues, and private channel/premade runs rather than open pugging. I'd agree with suggestions to improve rewards (maybe by making them XP Boost zones like the Red Alerts), but I just don't think the cooldowns are recent enough additions to be a cause or even a contributing factor.
About making some PvE Queues solo missions, we already have precedent for that. Within the Romulan Vengeance Arc you will find solo Missions for Atmospheric Assault (Te Best Defense) and Defend Rh'lhho Station (Abducted). Very doable because they have already done it.
And if you look at the last Shuttle Event, the most popular Mission that was being run - Atmospheric Assault. Nor Rocket Science folks - it gave the best rewards. Do that on a consistent basis all around and you will see people playing them again.
For the Shuttle Event I went the other direction; it's such a specialized format that I just stopped running the entire Event when the cooldowns were added. There already seemed to be a limited number of folks interested in running it, and once the cooldowns were applied it just felt like a waste of time setting up my shuttles and waiting for the Shuttle Event queues to pop when I could go have fun in the regular queues I already liked and was already set up for. In some ways, I was applying my workaround to the entire Shuttle Event... simply by running something else that I enjoyed that wasn't subject to the cooldowns.
With each passing day I wonder if I stepped into an alternate reality. The Cubs win the world series. Donald Trump is President. Britain leaves the EU. STO gets a dedicated PvP season. Engineers are "out of control" in STO.
Yes indeed, that first Shuttle Event was the best. Hop in and out and in as the queues for the Federation Fleet Alert always popped. My KDF characters weren't in a Fleet at the time so they did Atmospheric Assault or Storming the Spire instead; not as lucrative.
The next time they ran the Event it had the timers and a whole load of the fun had been sucked out of it. Also since that time they revamped the Mark Rewards for Atmospheric Assault. Double those and with the fact it was a five person queue meant that it popped very quickly. Last time it seemed to be the go to queue with Federation Fleet Alert running second. KDF Fleet Alerts don't pop as often as the Federation ones.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
Certain queues are dead due to some being unfun, take to long to complete and reward less than a mission that may be quicker.
Before Delta Rising i used to run all the Borg STF's Space and Ground on the old elite. Now i only run ISA and CSA and on occasion maybe KSA.
Ground i haven't touched as the hit point boost that came with DR launch put me off and haven't had the urge to sample the changes yet.
Khitomer i stopped playing regualrly due to the hit point boost for the structures has made it a total snooze fest. I can clear the Cube and Spheres easily enough but 2.5MIL hit points for a transformer and 5 mil for the gates. Its park and wait for auto fire to finish job whilst you go make a cuppa, that map is boring like a few others. Gre'thor for example. Simple enough objectives but dps is required for stage 1 and 3.
Personally i would rather have the queued events and STFs rolled back to pre DR status back when they were actually fun and worth the time and not such a headache because of needing even more DPS.
Suspending the cool down will not change the fact that certain STF are simply far more time efficient than others.
Suspending the cool down will simply result in people playing the same queues over and over again.
QFT .
DPS-Bronze, DPS-Silver, DPS-Gold, etc. are FAKE! They were created by an outvoted minority who destroyed the original DPS channels!
Tactical Team sucked, once upon a time. I got it buffed. Don't think for a minute that Cryptic ignores forum feedback.
Not needed or going to help imo.
What may help would be to tailor each queue reward individually so that some of the longer more complex missions have higher rewards to offset the higher time/effort required.
"If this will be our end, then I will have them make SUCH an end as to be worthy of rememberance! Out of torpedos you say?! Find me the ferengi!".
Solutions:
1) Hike up the rewards of the unpopular queues enough to incentivate playing them.
Precisely, also throw in more “only to get in queues stuff” like salvage tech and much more upgrade tokens and things would smoothen out.
Queued PvE is the only endgame contend we have in STO as far as I’m concerned. Sad so few peeps go for it and become as Dil rich as I do over it. In addition to the doff system the outcome of 2-3 elite queues is usually enough to hit the daily refinement limit on a char. My timeframe to do so is 15-20 minutes before I need to hop to an alt.
Omega Marks: Defera Labor Camp, ISA
Romulan Marks: Tholian RA Daily, Tau Dewa Patrol Daily.
Nuka Marks: Tholian RA Daily, Nuka Ground
Voth Marks: Star Turok, Dinosaur Hunter.
Undine Marks: UBZ
Delta Marks: Kobalistan, Delta Patrols
Iconian Marks: Kobalistan
What's the trend we see here? Of all of these, all but two of the items on the list are NOT EVEN QUEUES!
If peeps are having fun with this by all means. 15 minutes of that for me would be a one-way ticked to go offline.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
Comments
Why the fixation with PvE queus? Didn't the OP just made another poll a few days ago:
http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline/#/discussion/1204981/are-pve-queues-popular-or-not
No need to beat a dead horse. This is the model employed since F2P came onboard and same issue happens with low turn out year after year. Late summer and early fall have been common decline in overall player participation since F2P went live and that creates "EMPTY queus". It's a normal cycle but Cryptic has tried to fix this by having seasons/expansions come up at those critical times.
DR launched last October and so will Season 11 this year. Give it sometime and things should come back up. However, if you stick around you will see ups/downs on player participation. This is bad for solo players but get a fleet or armada that can help you run those PVEs at your own pace instead of asking for huge systematic changes in the design of the game.
Creating same polls over and over again with same topic does not help this cause.
Original STO beta tester.
Unique rewards is one way to get people to play, but do these slow STF need to be queued content?
Make slow STF stand alone missions with rewards like doff packs.
PVE missions like Storming the Spire, The Breach and viscous cycle would be well suited for that treatment.
For PVE with 3 difficulties (normal, advanced and elite) remove the normal difficulty or make the normal difficulty variant into standalone missions or patrol missions to thin out the queue.
The time that normal difficulty was useful for learning or even worth the time is long past us so if advanced and elite variants are available then they (normal variant) should either be removed completely or be put to use as stand-alone or patrol missions.
You are wrong. It was always like this even before the queues were in place. For instance, pre- F2P hardly anyone would do "Breaking the planet", "Terradome, Ground SB24 or the old DS9 under Siege". Some of those have gone away but does it sound familiar?.
The problem with grouping players together was there even before the inception of the current queue system. Back then, if you were heavily equipped and DPS savvy you could take the event on your own. Post F2P queus system killed that since now you have to have a "group" of players to enter the event.
Anyway, point being made there were "empty queus" there and so it is now rewind that 7 or so seasons past with same problem. Nothing new in this.
Original STO beta tester.
And I actually promote to go back to this model. Yes, drops are random and "not fair" and yes you might not get your piece of equipment after twenty runs. So play on. That's the reason we play this game for - all that window-shopping and instant-gratification stuff leaves a lot of the game lacking, like having 80% of the queues superflous and that chunk of content could basically be cut from the game without loss.
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
its a simple design that alot of MMO's use . thats the direction STO should be taking .
Once players make up their mind what they like most (and they will always do that, regardless of how well balanced rewards are), other people will also play these queues, just because they are being played, so it's possible to just play and enjoy the game instead of waiting.
As for increasing the rewards. Be careful what you ask for. The only way they could even have a chance at getting more activity in the queues would be to increase the rewards while nerfing rewards in the areas that people are currently spending most of their time doing. The outrage would be tremendous and overall it would serve to make it even harder to grind out the marks etc.
So just leave this stuff alone. The reason the queues have little activity is because it's far easier to do other things to get what you need and I for one am mostly satisfied with the way things are.
1) Hike up the rewards of the unpopular queues enough to incentivate playing them.
2) Remove the CD on all ground queues and lower the cooldown on the unpopular space queues to 15 minutes.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
Like with many other mechanics in this game, its just time gating to keep you logged in longer. Simple as that.
I can only speculate:
(1) many people do not read many posts but put their opinion under the thread anyways, even if it was mentioned a dozen times (and sometimes even refuted).
(2) the red, at least for me, is difficult to read. The green further up is similar but has better contrast.
(3) a whole post where everything is emphasized at least to me screams "you only need to skim me, I'm only here for the attention" (no offence meant, but that's how I react to all color, all caps, every other word using some kind of emphasis like bold, underline, different font size and similar). And yes, that makes me kind of a hypocrite considering point (1) I just made.
That being said, removing normal queues is not an option IMO. Players who know their drill through everything are the exception, games like this do have a high turnover rate and there should be some learning ground for new arrivals, which the game needs to stay afloat. Of course it doesn't work properly as it is, but a dry run of the stuff should be accessible so I don't have to worry too much about stuff happening while I read the in game instructions and get my bearings of the map.
The queues these days are dead because the reward/effort ration is totally screwed and so a large number of people won't play the inefficient queues.
Just look at those that payout a pittance in dilithium or marks, colony invasion, SB24, Breach, Breaking the Planet - they are all dead because you can get more marks, dilithium or loot elsewhere for less effort or the same.
And those queues needing 20 players? They are dead unless you go private with a lot of friends or are in a channel like the new 20player one and can get like minded people together.
Cooldowns have nothing to do with it. All it is is simple time:reward ratios being unbalanced and people going for the most efficient way to farm resources (be they marks, dilithium, XP etc)
And if you look at the last Shuttle Event, the most popular Mission that was being run - Atmospheric Assault. Not Rocket Science folks - it gave the best rewards. Do that on a consistent basis all around and you will see people playing them again.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
The cooldowns aren't that big of an issue anyway... if you have more than one character and a few queues you like. Run the queues you like, if you hit a point where all of them are on cooldown swap characters, work from there. Admittedly, I tend to prefer playing multiple characters/factions/professions/etc., but that does serve as a complete workaround for the issue.
Really, though, it's not a huge surprise that the queues are quieter these days. We have top Mk gear unavailable on the drop or Shop tables, higher NPC hitpoints, lower rewards for Advanced queues (720 dilithium) than the old Elites (960 dilithium) they replaced, longer progression systems with higher progression requirements, and so on. Those things will naturally push players into more efficient queues, and private channel/premade runs rather than open pugging. I'd agree with suggestions to improve rewards (maybe by making them XP Boost zones like the Red Alerts), but I just don't think the cooldowns are recent enough additions to be a cause or even a contributing factor.
For the Shuttle Event I went the other direction; it's such a specialized format that I just stopped running the entire Event when the cooldowns were added. There already seemed to be a limited number of folks interested in running it, and once the cooldowns were applied it just felt like a waste of time setting up my shuttles and waiting for the Shuttle Event queues to pop when I could go have fun in the regular queues I already liked and was already set up for. In some ways, I was applying my workaround to the entire Shuttle Event... simply by running something else that I enjoyed that wasn't subject to the cooldowns.
The next time they ran the Event it had the timers and a whole load of the fun had been sucked out of it. Also since that time they revamped the Mark Rewards for Atmospheric Assault. Double those and with the fact it was a five person queue meant that it popped very quickly. Last time it seemed to be the go to queue with Federation Fleet Alert running second. KDF Fleet Alerts don't pop as often as the Federation ones.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
Before Delta Rising i used to run all the Borg STF's Space and Ground on the old elite. Now i only run ISA and CSA and on occasion maybe KSA.
Ground i haven't touched as the hit point boost that came with DR launch put me off and haven't had the urge to sample the changes yet.
Khitomer i stopped playing regualrly due to the hit point boost for the structures has made it a total snooze fest. I can clear the Cube and Spheres easily enough but 2.5MIL hit points for a transformer and 5 mil for the gates. Its park and wait for auto fire to finish job whilst you go make a cuppa, that map is boring like a few others. Gre'thor for example. Simple enough objectives but dps is required for stage 1 and 3.
My character Tsin'xing
QFT .
Tactical Team sucked, once upon a time. I got it buffed. Don't think for a minute that Cryptic ignores forum feedback.
What may help would be to tailor each queue reward individually so that some of the longer more complex missions have higher rewards to offset the higher time/effort required.
"If this will be our end, then I will have them make SUCH an end as to be worthy of rememberance! Out of torpedos you say?! Find me the ferengi!".
Precisely, also throw in more “only to get in queues stuff” like salvage tech and much more upgrade tokens and things would smoothen out.
Queued PvE is the only endgame contend we have in STO as far as I’m concerned. Sad so few peeps go for it and become as Dil rich as I do over it. In addition to the doff system the outcome of 2-3 elite queues is usually enough to hit the daily refinement limit on a char. My timeframe to do so is 15-20 minutes before I need to hop to an alt.
If peeps are having fun with this by all means. 15 minutes of that for me would be a one-way ticked to go offline.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.